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Status: Closed...
There is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, along with two honorable mentions, so five overall placements out of 13 participants.
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I am currently judging normal?, best ongoing, and feel-good. Normal? will be out next, hopefully very soon.
You can expect results 1-2 times per month, maybe every two months at most. Now that I'm out of the situation I was in back in September–November, I can actually work on results for my contests. I would go into it, but today isn't about me, it's about these really, really awesome entries. My gosh was I impressed by this category. You guys did amazing! Congrats, everyone!
3rd Place
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Characters: 13/15. The two core characters in the story are Zaire, a prince, and Mara, a princess, so for the sake of this review, I will be focusing on those two!
To begin, Zaire is awesome. I don't even know why, but I just really, really like him. I love how he makes the mistake of letting the secret about Mara slip. It shows that even though he loves her, he's a flawed individual who, like Mara, can be caught up by emotions. Still, he tends to possess the calmer traits of the two, which makes sense considering he's the ice prince. I love how he has moments where he slips into rage, almost as if Mara influenced his personality that way, but in the end, he has that emotional maturity and calmness that Mara needs, and she accepts it. It's just tragic that it happened so late.
As for Mara, I'm invested in her, too. She quite literally is the flame. She has an untamed rage inside her, and her getting her powers really had it burst free. Her rage is extremely understandable. She's caught in the middle of a war she never asked for with her lover on the other side. Or, kind of lover, lol. But that aside, I can't imagine the pressure put on her to develop her powers, and when she does use them, they're basically unstoppable, but also uncontrollable, making her a danger but also really interesting.
Both Zaire and Mara are great protagonists who take the story to new heights. I love how they were like Yin and Yang and how they were such opposites yet so similar. Their worst traits clashed, but at the same time, they healed one another, and I thought that was beautiful.
